Results

Read about our success in marketing case studies

The marketing case studies track how the resorts performed and trended before MP&A was retained and reports performance for several years after employing MP&A programs.

MP&A has a well established track record of using integrated marketing to build revenue and occupancy for its resort clients. It is research like this that gives us the confidence to offer new clients a performance-based compensation agreement.

For several reasons both internal and external The Somerset on Grace Bay had been performing below its competitive set. In early 2013 management initiated a strategic plan to improve guest satisfaction and more effectively market the property.

MP&A was retained to design and implement the resort’s iCRM program which was launched along with a new responsive website in March 2013. Revenue began responding immediately and after the first year had increased by 29% over the previous year.

Revenue continued to rise in Year 2 which ended with revenue nearly doubling what it had been the year before iCRM.

During this same two-year period the resort initiated a major customer satisfaction and quality improvement program. As a result The Somerset’s TripAdvisor ranking jumped 16 positions going from #29 to #13 among 44 hotels in Providenciales.

Proof that a great product combined with great marketing can produce terrific financial rewards.

This luxury Caribbean hotel is one of only about fifty Caribbean properties to be distinguished with a 5-star TripAdvisor rating and was recently ranked as the #2 hotel in the entire region. The product, distribution and pricing we all excellent however management felt that revenue could be better.

MP&A was retained to develop and launch the hotel’s iCRM program. Immediately after program launch, revenue began to increase. After one year, it had jumped 25% over the previous year. After two years, revenue was up 45% and is still climbing.

Online visibility has increased thanks to a new website and SEO efforts, resulting in a 50% increase in website traffic. The relationship building email marketing program has an open rate that is 50% higher than the Caribbean hotel average, and click-through rates run 150% higher on average vs. Caribbean hotels.

Management was right. Even with a great product, revenue could be better.

Rosalie Bay Resort, Dominica

Re-launching an eco-boutique resort

Problem:

Rosalie Bay is a 28-room eco-boutique resort on Dominica. After nine years in development, the resort opened in 2010 with modest marketing or PR support. Problems included:

No clear positioning

A website that was generating insufficient traffic

An inconsistent Facebook fan page

Sporadic PR support

Few TripAdvisor reviews and no Business Listing

The biggest problem: both occupancy and revenue were growing slower than owner expectations.

Implication:

The resort needed to boost occupancy by creating more awareness among prospects and build relationships with past guests to encourage word-of-mouth marketing. MP&A was hired in November 2011 to launch an integrated customer relationship marketing campaign.

Target audience:

Dominica is a difficult island to access, with no direct flights outside of the Caribbean. The type of consumer who visits Dominica differs from the traditional sun, sea and sand Caribbean vacationer.

Visitors tend to be more eco-conscious, wellness/healthy travelers, and/or active who enjoy the outdoors. As an eco-boutique resort, Rosalie Bay Resort targets more affluent consumers with these qualities.

Because of the strong ecological nature of Dominica and Rosalie Bay, the resort pulls a significant number of visitors from beyond the prime Caribbean gateways.

Rationale:

MP&A developed a comprehensive integrated customer relationship marketing program for Rosalie Bay, which began almost immediately. The program included the following:

Positioning and Tagline – The first step was to create a benefit-oriented positioning and tagline, which would be reinforced in all communications. After speaking with past guests and conducting an evaluation with the resort, MP&A positioned Rosalie Bay Resort as an eco-boutique and wellness retreat.
The tagline "Simply Magical" plays off the unsurpassed natural beauty of the resort and destination, as well as the positive feeling guests get from eating healthy, being active and relaxing. The magical also highlights the incredible guest experience of watching sea turtles nest and hatch on the resort's protected black sand beach.

Website – The next step was to develop a new, search engine optimized website with large photos to entice visitors (launched in January 2012). The website established Rosalie Bay's online visibility and thus, part of the initial research phase for travelers.
To boost SEO and website visits, a pay-per-click campaign was launched. All marketing, advertising and PR efforts were designed to drive traffic to the website and encourage visitors to call to book a vacation or request additional information.

Database – As a fairly new resort, generating awareness among prospects is key to the strategy and several tactics were used. To build the database, MP&A created a prominent newsletter sign up on the website and created a system at the resort to better capture guest email addresses. It also redesigned the registration card and worked with the resort on training staff to accurately capture contact information, confirm it upon checkout and enter it in the database.

Public Relations – A proactive PR campaign was launched using press releases, pitching journalists and most importantly, hosting individual press trips for writers with online and print publications to experience it first-hand for feature article coverage.

Results:

In the first ten months of the integrated marketing program, Rosalie Bay Resort has achieved the following results:

Monthly website traffic more than tripled

The resort has been mentioned in more than 80 online and a dozen print publications

Facebook fans and engagement significantly increased

Room revenue more than doubled vs. the previous year.

Rosalie Bay is on pace to increase occupancy and revenue by a factor of 2.5 in 2012 compared to 2011.

The Reefs, Bermuda

The Reefs is widely recognized as Bermuda's best hotel and consistently achieved the highest occupancy levels of any property on the island. MP&A worked with The Reefs for more than 16 years. Over the years we instituted a strong integrated marketing program designed to acquire and retain profitable customers. Marketing communications has focused primarily on the Internet, direct and email marketing, public relations, promotion and a modest amount of print.

During the period before MP&A began working with The Reefs the resort's occupancy followed, but lagged a few months behind the trend in air arrivals. Shortly after we were retained, air arrivals to Bermuda began a gradual and prolonged decline.

Both The Reefs' occupancy and Bermuda air arrivals dipped as a result of 9/11. Air arrivals continued to slide while occupancy at The Reefs bounced back fairly quickly — much faster than what was reported by other hotels on the island. The vast majority of booking at The Reefs comes direct.

Integrated marketing works.

Nisbet Plantation Beach Club, Nevis

Nisbet Plantation Beach Club on the unspoiled island of Nevis is a small, independent luxury resort with 36 cottage-style guest accommodations set on 30 lush tropical acres.

The Caribbean’s only plantation inn directly on the beach, Nisbet Plantation has continually earned high accolades for its exceptional service. Most recently, Nisbet Plantation was named the #1 resort in the Caribbean by both Travel + Leisure and Condé Nast Traveler magazines.

For more than 10 years, Nisbet Plantation has partnered with MP&A Digital & Advertising to deploy a Customer Relationship Marketing Program (CRM) to build loyal and profitable customers. The program proved how valuable it is to this small resort by helping Nisbet successfully navigate the Great Recession.

Download the complete story of how Nisbet was able to prosper in difficult times.

When Casa del Mar selected MP&A to revamp their marketing program they were suffering through a steep slump in both occupancy and revenue. It took several months to get the resort's new integrated marketing program in place and when it was officially launched both occupancy and revenue began increasing at a very steady clip.

The Casa del Mar program included a completely new positioning, brochure, a new optimized website, database for both direct mail and email marketing, public relations, barter, advertising exclusively to the honeymoon and destination wedding market, trade advertising and promotion.

Within two years revenue for the resort reached historic highs. More importantly, the resort was able to raise rates substantially so this record revenue is being generated with 14 fewer occupancy points than at its previous high allowing it room for substantially more revenue and profits to be realized.

At Tiangis, Mexico’s annual marketplace, Casa del Mar was awarded the prize for the best hotel marketing plan in Los Cabos. The award, presented by Classic Custom Vacation, is given to the hotel with the consistently strongest results throughout the year.

After two years Casa del Mar was able to win the Peppers & Rogers Integrated 1-to-1 Marketing Impact Award — perhaps the most prestigious award in marketing.

Integrated marketing works.

Stonington Beach, Bermuda

The Stonington Beach Hotel case study shows all the positive results that can be generated by following the same integrated marketing process presented earlier in the customer relationship chart.

At the time MP&A was hired, occupancy levels for Stonington were on par with those of the major hotels in Bermuda. Shortly after Stonington's integrated marketing program was launched occupancy began to rise dramatically. Four and a half years later the occupancy for Stonington was over 20 points higher than Bermuda's major hotels.

There are three very important points to be made from the Stonington Beach case study:

Advertising, email, social media, the web, promotion, public relations and all the other media are only tools designed to help you sell. No matter how new, sexy and flashy a medium is, it is still only a tool that must be integrated into an overall strategy in order to help build sales.

MP&A Digital & Advertising has been practicing the disciplines of integrated marketing in travel since it opened its doors in 1989. It is a discipline Mr. Pratt studied and practiced well before that while working with many of the world’s largest and most sophisticated marketers. To us, “integrated” it is not the latest buzz word, but our core marketing philosophy.

Background:

During the economic downturn in late 2009, The Reefs in Bermuda opened a new spa and private residence club. The 64-room luxury resort, which has a high repeat guest rate, needed to both sell real estate and increase hotel stays by expanding its customer base.

The Reefs was about to launch a new search engine optimized website for both the hotel and Club. Previously, they had two separate sites.

Objectives:

To increase web visits

To generate top-of-mind awareness in past guests and new prospects of The Reefs’ experience

To expand The Reefs database

Strategy:

To launch the new site MP&A created an online contest that turned loyal guests into advocates and generated interest in the property among prospects and the media.

For February, the month of love, The Reefs created the “Show Your Love” contest and asked past guests to share a favorite experience in 500 words. Entries were narrowed to seven finalists, posted on the website and voted on by the public. Public voting provided an opportunity to expose the resort experience via strong testimonials to new prospects. A vacation giveaway to both the winning story and a randomly selected voter provided an incentive to past guests to enter and to the public to read the stories and vote.

Implementation:

An integrated digital marketing campaign, including website, email, social media and public relations, was designed by MP&A to communicate the contest from launch to the selections of both winners.

A contest icon was designed and used in all communications, including a button on the website home page. Communications included: landing page with entry form, finalist stories, voting form and rules; HTML e-mails; press releases to travel media; and messages on The Reefs’ Facebook page and blog.

Building upon the month of love, messages focused on love of The Reefs and Bermuda such as proposals in the sand, destination weddings, honeymoons and family celebrations.

Results:

With less than $4,000 and relying on email/database marketing, social media and public relations efforts, The Reefs exceeded its goals for the promotion. The contest generated 603 essay entries and 3,264 votes.

It also increased traffic to the new website. The month-long contest launch generated a 165% increase in website visits compared to 2009, and the first day of voting generated more than 3,000 contest-specific web visits and 50 new Facebook fans. Web visits were up nearly 40% for the contest period compared to the same time in 2009 and continue to trend ahead of previous years.

“Show Your Love” also succeeded in generating awareness to new prospects. During the contest, 60% of web visits were new and there were 229 new e-newsletter subscribers. PR resulted in several media placements including Caribbean Travel + Life, Bermuda.com and a feature article in Hilton Head Monthly (the winners’ home town).

Within two weeks of the contest, 64 reservations directly tracked to the campaign representing nearly $200,000 in room revenue.

Positioning is the way you want people to think about your product, company or resort. It must be simple and straightforward. It is one of the most basic strategic statements, is the blueprint for marketing and development and helps focus the efforts of everyone involved in marketing.

Today people are bombarded with information and need to filter out the noise. They do this by compartmentalizing messages from products and associating them with specific benefits. Think of how Volvo is associated with "safety." Or FEDEX with "overnight."

These brands have spent millions of dollars in marketing to have people associate their product with one specific benefit. When someone is in the market for a product that delivers these benefits their company will be top of mind and immediately be in their consideration set.

MP&A is expert at positioning. There are specific guidelines used to develop a strong, benefit-oriented positioning and we can help you create one that is a perfect fit for company or resort. Here are a few examples of benefit-oriented positionings MP&A has created for clients in the hospitality and travel industry.

A solid positioning articulates a clear benefit customers receive by choosing your particular product or hotel. In each case every marketing communications program is prepared with your positioning in mind. Repetition is the Mother of Learning and by incorporating a strong and consistent message throughout marketing and sales, your company or product can rise above and outperform competition.

Do you have a strong, benefit-oriented positioning? Would you like to know more about how you could develop one? Contact us.